India Women can seal their three-match T20I series against Zimbabwe Women at the Shaheed Veer Narayan Singh International Stadium in Naya Raipur on October 18, after taking the opener by four wickets in Smriti Mandhana's first match as India's full-time T20I captain. It is the first bilateral T20I series between the two countries.
Mandhana's win in game one, however scrappy the chase looked after an early batting wobble, was the start her tenure needed. Vice-captain Shafali Verma — the leading run-scorer in women's T20Is this year and this September's ICC Women's Player of the Month — is the player India's batting plans continue to be built around alongside Mandhana at the top of the order.
Jemimah Rodrigues remains unavailable for the series as she recovers from a hamstring injury, while several players involved in India's Asian Games campaign were left out of this squad entirely. Zimbabwe, for their part, have retained the group that gave West Indies a competitive series in ODIs last month, and will be looking for the kind of middle-order contribution that nearly derailed India's chase in the first game.
A series win today would give Mandhana's captaincy exactly the start selectors and fans will want to see, with the dead-rubber third T20I following at the same venue on October 20 before the squads reconvene for three ODIs in Vadodara from October 23. For Zimbabwe, avoiding a series defeat in game two is the more realistic target than overturning the deficit outright, given how one-sided this fixture list has looked on paper.
With both the venue and personnel largely unchanged from game one, Deepti Sharma and debutant Niki Prasad — the two players who rescued India's chase in the opener — remain the standout picks for fantasy squads building around another low-to-moderate total at this ground.
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Team news in this article is verified against same-day and freshly re-checked reporting as of October 18, 2026.
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